


I Would Make You Stay

by XzadionOmega



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-06 13:43:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11601831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XzadionOmega/pseuds/XzadionOmega
Summary: "There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness." Ruben and Laura, through the years. Being re-written as of 8/24/2018!





	1. Chapter 1

The offices of Doctor Reid Stevens was settled on the second floor of a brick building in the central business district of Brunswick. Packed between Onacki Insurance and Avaya Tech Solutions, the doctor’s classy gold lettering on the building’s directory failed to look like anything but a lawyer’s office.

The old rube was as slippery as a lawyer, just as prone to long-winded nonsense, but he was actually a psychotherapist. Ruben had been seeing the man for years, with a history of therapy stretching back even further than that. As an adolescent, his therapy visits had been biweekly, filled with silence. As an adult it had settled down to once a month, provided that he kept in touch with the college counselor as well while he had access to her. It was also filled with genial lies, instead of obstinate quiet. Since Ruben’s adolescence and first session with his therapy, it always opened with the same barrage of questions and the same answers.

“How is school?”

“Fine.”

“Mmhm. And how are your parents?”

“They’re fine.”

“Mmhm. And how is Laura?”

“She’s well. She’s started a new book. She loves it.”

Or: “She’s in the middle of her book from last time. She’s heartbroken.”

Or: “She’s finished her book. She loathed it.”

Anything to that effect. Ruben knew that he gave more attention to his information about Laura, an indication of how much more attention he gave to her in general. It was this very disproportion that Ruben buried away, ignoring it the same way he ignored a patient’s sob story in his office. He chose to let Doctor Stevens focus on the motivations behind Ruben’s experiments. His youth’s dissections, his relationship with his parents, his ties to Robert’s disappearance.

Privately, Ruben had decided that his fixation on his sister must have happened long ago, concretizing in his youth. Doctor Stevens would probably have some absolutely misguided ideas that he would have been far too eager to share. If Ruben had bothered to present the idea to the hack, he would have likely stroked his smog cloud of a beard and postulated himself to death. From the depths of a cushy, leather armchair, the bearded, rheumy-eyed gnome of a man would prattle on about some function of maternal closeness and said matron's preoccupation with high society creating a vacuum of maternal affection that Ruben sought to fill, and found his sister a workable substitute. He would have painted a picture of a neglected little boy—little Ruben Victoriano, age five—lost, alone, and searching for love in any warm place he could find it.

In truth, Ruben would rather dangle his therapists by the charlatans’ own strings and chalk the preliminary fixation up to architecture. Ruben failed to trust his nanny who slept next door, finding her cold and unpleasant. Laura's bedroom was closer than that of his mother. Laura was less hostile to being shaken awake in the middle of the night. She was also kinder in most other regards, able to get him to sleep more easily. Simple facts motivated him to seek out the comfort of his sister when he needed it, rather than that of his mother.

Ruben would sneak through the hallways, terrified of being caught by whatever boogeyman he had invented for himself that night. He would open the dark oak door of Laura’s bedroom, the scent of bubblegum and cheap, children’s cosmetics hitting him like a cloud. Inside, moonlight would reflect off of all the whiteness in Laura’s room: the carpets, the dresser, the collection of music boxes that would emit the odd chime in the night. Everything would glow in moonlight, and Ruben would creep over this soft carpet of lights until he reached Laura’s canopy bed. Brushing back the gauzy canopy, he would regard his wondrous sister in awe.

At eight-years old, she was already shaping up to be more swan than duckling, and already looked like she would not be inherited much besides coloration from her mother. In the dim moonlight, Laura’s nightgowns would blend into the sheets, creating a stark contrast with her luxurious, dark hair that she bound in two braids every evening with Mama’s help. Ruben would gently shake her shoulder, and Laura would roll over, murmuring from sleep. Eventually, his name would emerge from the confused sounds, and she would open her eyes—the same whimsical color as the sky—and smile at him. Sometimes, depending on how recently she had gotten to sleep, she would grin and suggest playing instead of sleeping. They would sneak through the manor, their bare feet pattering on the parquet flooring. They would play house, dance along the floor of the foyer, and make enough noise to get taken back to their respective rooms by their nanny. More often, Laura would throw an arm out across the empty space of her mattress, beckoning him to come and rest beside her. Ruben would curl into her, lay his head on her chest, and he would fall into a fitful sleep.

As far as Ruben could tell, his dreams were unusual. The content was so different from the dreams his peers had, and so he was reluctant to share them. In his dreams, Ruben would see beating hearts, wide open eyes, and hairline cracks in bones. He had just started figuring out how dissection worked, and the lost animals that made the mistake of hiding behind their house were the perfect test subjects. What he saw were both profoundly disturbing and deeply fascinating. Morning would come and Ruben would lie awake with his eyes closed, marveling at what his twitching unconscious had revealed to him. He would note the colors behind his eyes as light filtered in, that dark, orange-red color that indicated blood just below the surface, according to the anatomy books in his father’s office. These were not nightmares that Ruben was being gifted with, and he knew that, even as a child. Later in life, he would be able to call it inspiration.

When he opened his eyes, Laura would be snoozing away beside him. Her hair would have come loose from her braids during the night, and she would be as beautiful in the light of day as she had been in the night. Ruben could watch her for what felt like hours in those days. Some days, he would do just that; lay with her until she woke up. Laura would be energized by the sight of the sun, and demand that they get breakfast and go play. Other days, Ruben would creep away to his room so that he could feign waking up for his nanny, until the woman was dismissed. This routine went on for several years until he could sleep by himself, and Laura never complained about her weekly visitor.

Doctor Stevens would be a fool to assume that desperation had led Ruben to fall in love with her. If anything, Ruben was desperate without her.


	2. Chapter 2

_I don’t mean to exonerate my brother. He has never been the more regulated one, between the two of us. That always fell to me, the responsible one. Between his fits of temper and his horrible way of coping with what he couldn’t control, Ruben was never going to be forgiven by much of anyone. But I always loved him. Even when his actions called for my hatred, I tried to love him as much as I could. You see, there were times during our childhood when I was all he had._

Her father's library has always been a place of solace for Laura. The towering shelves ensconced her, the same way a calyx protected a flower.  Sometimes she could find her father there after Elizabeth, the au pair, excused her from dinner, and Laura could observe him at work. They could spend the whole evening that way, father and daughter curled in their respective corners. Together, but perfectly alone in their separate worlds. More often, Ernesto was out at a party with his wife, leaving Laura and her brother to wander the stacks by themselves. 

Not that stack-wandering did not provide its own pleasures. On the upper levels of the library, in the dusty sunlight that filtered through the windows, Laura had discovered herself in classic literature. She had thrown herself at the books with a dictionary close by, and her report cards at school reflected her unbridled enthusiasm. (Even now, Laura can see the remarks in hurried blue ink, black ink, and graphite gray: "Loves reading!" "Always wonderful during library trips!" "Great spelling!") On the other hand, Ruben preferred to keep to the lower levels of the library, where the thick reference books that belonged to their paternal grandfather sat, gathering dust. Three years her junior, Ruben was devouring large medical tomes, filled with complex Latin that Laura did not feel confident tackling, even with her dictionary.

Friday was dismal and rainy, pushing any motivation Laura had for actual homework away from her. Instead, she decided to play like she was in a Jane Austen novel. Her plan was take a cup of lemon tea into the library before dinner. Laura curled herself into the velvet brocade of the couch and opened her latest book: The Pilgrim's Progress. Finding her place from where she had marked it, Laura murmured the line she had left off on: "Wake up, see your own wretchedness, and fly to the Lord Jesus." She read further in, getting lost in the text. Soon she was so buried that she did not realize the phone was ringing.

“Laura,” the au pair barked.

“What,” she shouted back.

“Phone for you! It’s Amelia!”

“Okay!” Laura put her book down and abandoned her tea, hunting down the phone in the music room down the hall. It was an elegant thing, a rotary with gleaming brass trim. Most of the house was modernized, which made the functional antiques her father cherished stand out all the more. Laura picked up the receiver.

"Hello?" A click. Elizabeth had hung up. 

"Laura, it's Amelia!" 

"Amelia, hi!" 

Laura took the phone off the end table, trailing the black cord behind her as she settled back onto the couch. She lifted the long black hair from under her and let it fall behind the arm. Laura got comfortable; Amelia was a chatty thing with wide hazel eyes and a curly bob. Whether they were in-person and on the phone, Amelia could talk about anything for seemingly forever. Their conversation traipsed along, visiting the same topics their conversations always did: movies they had seen recently, music that was too old for them, boys they liked, friends they hated, and their teachers. 

"Hey, how was Math?" 

"Awful," Laura whined. "I think Miss Baruch must, like, hate me or something." 

"She hates everyone." 

At that moment, Ruben came into the music room. In this case, it seemed like Ruben had the same idea about putting off his homework for something more entertaining. Most of the time, Ruben's piano practice lined up beautifully with Laura's reading time; he was like a metronome in his regularity. After dinner, they would go and do their homework together, but before dinner, Ruben would play piano and Laura would read or listen. Rarely both. 

"I've got to go," she told Amelia. 

On the phone, her classmate asked, "Ruben's playing piano?"  

"Yes. How did you--?"  

"Just a guess. Goodbye," she said. Not unkindly, just quickly. The line clicked dead, and Laura found herself frowning at the receiver. Amelia was probably off calling Melissa now, reporting that Laura had ended their conversation to spend time with Ruben. It was not the first time that Laura had chosen her brother over her friends, and Laura knew that it would not be the last. Laura liked her friends, but she found her brother’s company much more interesting. Her friends had to know it, but why was that such a bad thing?

Ruben’s eyes burned into her, as if reading all the questions in Laura’s mind. "Am I interrupting something?" It was stilted language for a ten-year old, but Ruben’s formality was familiar. It isolated him from his peers, forming a thick wall of stone between him and anyone he could call a friend.

"Not really. I was reading and then Amelia called." As Ruben seated himself at the bench, Laura repositioned herself. On her belly, leaning over the arm of the loveseat, she tried to catch a glimpse at his sheet music. "What's the plan for today?"

"I have to practice for the recital. So, Chopin, Beethoven, and Debussy.”

"Mmm... Tell me you're playing my song."  

"I insisted on it." Ruben was stretching his fingers, his arms. Laura watched him with rapt fascination. After a while of that, Ruben turned to Laura. His pale eyes were always so dour, even when discussing something as small as piano practice. He was ten, and already as serious as their father. "I'm saving it for the end of the recital, but should I play it now?"  

"No, no. I want to savor it. Anticipate it."  

Ruben nodded stiffly. Ruben positioned his fingers over the keys and took a deep breath. The gravity of his hands made for a surprisingly light touch as he began to play. The sounds of the piano filled the room. Laura laid on her back, letting Ruben’s music take her out of herself, away from The Pilgrim’s Progress, away from her friends, and into a place that was just Ruben’s music. The melody got more intense, as Ruben’s music was wont to do. Laura drifted on it, letting it carry her along the air--

A hiccup brought Laura back to the music room. “Shoot,” Ruben muttered. He tried the passage again at half the speed. Then again at a quarter of the speed. Laura turned onto her side to watch him. He glowered at the keys, then played each note with rigid deliberation. Only at that moment did Laura notice something.

“What happened to your shirt from this morning?”

“What are you talking about,” Ruben said, not looking at her.

“You were wearing a blue shirt earlier today. I remember.” Ruben’s shirt was white now, a button-down shirt that usually hung in his closet for special occasions. “What happened?”

“It got dirty, Laura.” Ruben had picked up on his mistake, running through the section with one hand.

“How did you dirty it?”

“I fell in the mud. Drop it, okay?” Ruben added his second hand, playing the part at half speed again, then at its proper tempo. “Got it,” he murmured.

“Alright. Be more careful, okay?”

“I will,” he said, focused on continuing his practice.

//

            Laura was not the only one who noticed Ruben’s shirt. Their father, just after saying grace over the meal, had given the shirt a lingering look, but did not ask any questions of him. Elizabeth gave him a calculating look as they went to dinner, but also kept her peace. Possibly because she was not a true member of the family, and could afford not to care. Instead she gestured to the hallway, indicating that Ernesto had a phone call. Finally it was Beatriz who offered the first reaction, making a face at her son over her wine. “Why are we dressing for dinner, Ruben?”

            “I fell in a puddle on my way into the house,” he said. Ernesto re-entered the room and Ruben’s eyes flickered to his father for the briefest moment. “I couldn’t find any other shirts.”

            Beatriz looked to her husband for support and found him silent. She took a forkful of salad and, after chewing, she addressed the au pair. “Elizabeth, would you mind doing a load of laundry before you turn in?”

            “Sure thing.”

            Ernesto took his place at the head of the table and began digging into his food. “That was Raoul Ramirez.” Everyone was silent and continued eating when Ernesto did not immediately continue his statement. He also ate but, after a while, he looked at his children, further down the table. “Have either of you seen a calico cat? They haven’t seen theirs since yesterday's dinner.” Laura shook her head. She knew Alex Ramirez's cat; a sleek white cat with mis-matched eyes named Cordero. She would have remembered if she had seen it. Ruben shook his head as well. “If you do, tell Alex when you’re at school.”

            “Cats run away all the time,” Beatriz said flippantly. “Remember when Robert ran away and that wolf got him? It’s probably something just like that.”

            A strange dread took over Laura’s mind, a hazy one. She tried her best to copy her mother, obediently taking bites of her salad, but there was doubt in her heart, making everything taste as bland as newspaper. Laura looked at Ruben across the table and their eyes met. Ruben raised a fork to his mouth, and Laura saw a dark red crust along his cuticles that sent shivers down her spine. It was too dark to be any kind of ink or polish.

            After dinner, Laura and Ruben went upstairs quickly. Ruben tried to continue down the hallway to his own room, but Laura took him by the arm and guided him into hers. He did not make any move to resist her; apparently well aware of why she was pulling him away from his routine in the first place. Sequestered in Laura’s room, she asked him plainly: “Why?”

            “I wanted to see what was inside it,” he said. “The books are boring. I can’t cut up people yet, but I can cut open cats if I beat them against a rock first.”

            “That’s sick, Ruben. You shouldn’t be doing that!”

            “It’s for my research!”

            “What are you researching? You just kill them, cut the animals open, and then what? Scientists record things and write things down to find out things about what they're cutting open. Are you doing that?” Ruben shook his head. “I thought not.”

            “I’m sorry.” The words seemed to crumble when they came out of his mouth. “I know you liked the cat a lot. I should have been writing things down.”

            “No, maybe it’s better if you didn’t. Now no one can prove you did it.” Laura was thinking of Amelia again. Shelley St. Hilaire had put a note in her locker, saying she was going to beat her up after school. Amelia had been able to go to the teacher with the note and get Shelley in detention, even though Shelley had said it was a joke. If Ruben had written down his “experiments,” Alex could have found the notes and gotten Ruben in trouble. “Listen,” Laura said, “I’ll make you a deal.”

            “What’s the deal?”

            “If you promise you won’t kill things for experiments anymore, I promise I won’t tell anyone what you did this time.”

            Ruben studied her for a while. It was unnerving to be examined this way; like a bug under a microscope. Eventually, he put out his hand for a business-like shake. “Deal.”

            Laura took his hand and shook it. “Deal.”

//

            The family dinner table was more like a battle arena than a gathering place. Each night had been more tense than the last, but Laura could never put a source to the tension. It had something to do with Ruben and their father, and it lasted through dinner time. Most of it had sailed over Laura’s head as she merrily chattered away about her plans for her seventh grade exams. Almost all essays, except for a math test. Now that exams were over, she found herself noticing the uncomfortable silences more and more.

            At the very beginning of dinner, the family joined hands as best as they could around the wide table so they could say grace. Laura took her mother’s hand reached for Ruben’s hand. He took it loosely, noncommittally.

            “Let us pray,” their father said. “Ruben, its your turn to say grace.”

            “No.” The refusal was a shock, and Laura felt her mother squeeze her hand as if she were wincing. At ten-years old, Ruben had started demonstrating some disdain towards their father, but it had never blossomed into open rebellion before.

            “Ruben Victoriano, close your eyes and say grace with this family.”

            “Or what?”

            “Or you can leave the table.”

            Without another word, Ruben left the table, practically storming away from the room. Laura watched him leave. Ernesto’s face, usually a serene cloud of rosy cheeks and blond beard, grew dark as his son left.

“‘Train up a child in the way he should go,’” Ernesto quoted. “‘Even when he is old he will not depart from it.’”

Laura looked between her mother and father, hoping they would give some explanation for her brother’s behavior. Beatriz squeezed her husband’s hand supportively. Finally, Laura addressed her father. “What was that?”

            Ernesto let out a long-suffering sigh. “Ruben is currently undergoing a crisis of faith.” Laura furrowed her brow, trying to piece together what could have happened to her brother. “Last week, your brother came to me and said that he no longer believed in God. Since then, Ruben has been refusing to say grace, but I hadn’t tried to make him lead the prayer before tonight. I wanted it to help. Maybe stir something in him.” Ernesto sighed again, running a weary hand over his face. “We haven’t had church since his little outburst, but I doubt we can make him come to that either.”

            Laura nodded. God had always been important to her father, and Ernesto had tried to instill that importance to his children. Dutifully, Laura had gone to church alongside her family, as well as Sunday school with her brother when they were both children. But Laura could not remember any time that her heart had been especially involved with what they were doing. A trickle of fear spread across Laura’s heart. Maybe she did not believe in God either.

            Testing her father’s theory, Laura volunteered, “I could say grace tonight, Papa.”

            The storm seemed to leave her father’s face. “Go ahead, princess.”

            The family joined hands again. Laura took a deep breath and began. “Dear Lord, please bless our family, even if they aren’t at the table. Please let people without faith find it, and let faith get stronger in the ones who have it. Bless this meal, my brother, and my mama and papa. Amen.”

            “Amen,” Beatriz and Ernesto intoned.

            As they ate, Laura felt her heart sinking. She had said the prayer, repeated what her father wanted to hear, but she had not spoken to God, the way she usually did when the family said it. Instead, Laura made herself a promise: If she did not believe in God, she was going to keep it a secret from their father. It was better to hide hard truths, rather than make people upset.


	3. Chapter 3

In Doctor Stevens’ office, years later, Ruben bit back a chuckle at the memory of the cat promise. It was not their last secret promise, far from it. If anything, their agreement had set a precedent: It was okay to keep big secrets from their parents; Ruben could depend on Laura to support him at the cost of her own misery; and Laura could depend on Ruben to always keep his word.

Another thing that was harder for Ruben to articulate to the doctor was _when_ his fixation on Laura became less familial and more carnal. During adolescence, Ruben was certain, and that would have been an acceptable answer if he was sharing with Doctor Stevens. However, Ruben was not sharing the information with the quack, and he demanded more precision from himself.

            Ruben had always preferred dark haired women with pale skin, he supposed. The contrast between their skin and hair would excite his eyes and draw him in. Red just happened to be a popular color for underwear in pornography. It also reminded Ruben of his experiments and that was a deep comfort (they had died down somewhat since the cat incident, but they still happened when a specimen was conveniently at hand.) Ruben would abuse himself relentlessly to images and videos of these women, sneaking down to his father’s computer so that he could debase himself in peace. Occasionally, his internet searches would yield something interesting: Women getting battered by their partners; women getting tied into place and used savagely, acts that left them exposed and sobbing. When he found those images and videos, the pleasure came much faster than anything else could hope to bring it. Debasement achieved, Ruben would slink back upstairs and go to sleep, fitful in the black abyss.

Morning always came, and they usually brought Laura in one state or another. "Ruben!" Ruben's precious abyss exploded into shock and pain as Laura dived onto him. She was still in her nightgown—a cotton, burgundy dress—and she sat on top of him. Her slender legs straddling his stomach, with the warmth of her pressing against his core. "Ruben, you're sleeping the whole day away." Night-owl that he was, Ruben frowned at his sister and reached for one of the thick pillows on his bed. Fully intent on burying himself in the fluffy linens for a few more precious hours, Ruben squirmed and laid out on his side. Laura snatched the pillow away and walloped him with it. "Nope! Mama says we're going into town today. I'm going to the spring formal this year, and I need a new dress."

"Enjoy yourself, then." Ruben grabbed for the pillow, but Laura held fast to it. She pulled it closer to herself with a grin.

"You're coming with us. She wants to get you a new suit while we're there."

"No."

"It's not my order. It's Mama's."

As if summoned, Beatriz appeared in the doorway. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, as if she was about to undergo a facelift, making her narrow chin, long face, and gaunt bone structure stand out all the more. Still, Laura’s features were visible in her mother. She had inherited the pointed chin, the high cheekbones, and the lustrous texture of her hair. Still, Laura had taken the qualities to a free-wheeling beauty, while their mother presented as an austere and pristine kind of beauty. It was the comparison of a lily in a garden to a lily carved from marble. Even with the skin of her hairline pulled back, Beatriz still found a way to frown at her daughter. "Laura Victoriano, get off your brother and get dressed! We're leaving in an hour!"

Laura sheepishly got up and shuffled out of the room.

An hour later, Ruben found himself unwillingly bundled into the family car's backseat, with giddy Laura in the front seat and Beatriz driving. He kept his gaze turned outwards, and his venom inwards. Rather than berate Laura for her enthusiasm or his mother for her constant need for the spotlight (this _was_ the makings of another grab for the limelight, Ruben was sure), Ruben berated himself for letting himself get sucked into what must have seemed like a grand adventure to Laura. Outside the car, the sweeping countryside in which the manor was situated rushed past them in a flurry of sunflowers and tall pine trees. The bleak skies of the Saturday afternoon became slate-grey, concrete buildings as the Victorianos venture deep into the heart of Krimson City. After six songs of Laura's choosing and one of their mother's, Beatriz parked outside of Krimson Bank. Laura scrambled out of the car, gleeful to finally be in the city, surrounded by the businessmen in their suits and the women with their beautifully coiffed hair. Ruben and Beatriz followed, after Beatriz locked the car. Ruben did not miss that his mother had chosen to park directly under the Victoriano Plaza sign. She waved to the staff inside, ensuring that there would be no need for tickets or towing the car; she was Beatriz Victoriano, after all. A socialite to a fault, Beatriz Victoriano née Lopez, would of course want to be seen flaunting her status.

As far as Ruben understood it, the Lopez's were new money, not the three-going-on-four generations of shrewd business people that the Victorianos were. Lucky merchants, Ruben had once heard Ernesto say after too much brandy. Ruben's maternal grandfather had owned a saw mill in Oregon. His paternal grandfather had owned a bank, a family institution that became the Krimson Bank when Ruben's father had been a boy. When that boy became a man, he met a woman at an art gallery showing. Beatriz Lopez was whisked away from a comfortable life into a luxurious one. Her father's inheritance, invested by Victoriano patriarchs, became a sprawling fortune which fell back into the Victoriano's money when Ernesto married her. Soon Beatriz's secretarial schooling became a distant memory, and she became known for tasteful parties, gleaming raven hair, and tinkling laughter that always signaled her position in any given event. She took the occasional art class for two years until she became pregnant. Then she became a radiant mother of two, who just happened to paint occasionally.  Even though the world had not demanded it of her, Beatriz never lost her need to compensate for her background, even with a new scion to the Victoriano family as her son. Her future potential could never outweigh her past. Ruben saw it in every glass of chardonnay and every call back North, and the only thing he would ever do is give Laura another knowing glance.

The store Beatriz led them to was a concrete box with large, storefront windows labelled Tango Fashionworks across the top of its third story in neon orange lighting. Mannequins in dresses that were 80% rhinestones glittered in the glass. They looked to Ruben less like dresses and more like beetle carapaces, all shell and no substance. The first floor of the space was mostly dedicated to women's dresses and checkout counters, with a sign pointing to a staircase that promised all the Latest in Men's Fashions. Ruben would take their word for it. Beatriz  approached a blonde salesgirl, standing at the ready behind the gleaming white counters.

"Beatriz Victoriano," she said, by way of introduction. "I called you earlier today about fittings for my children."

"Yes, Mrs. Victoriano, of course." The salesgirl gave a big, toothy, customer service smile. Her teeth were vibrant under the light and, in the back of Ruben's mind, he remembered that some species still showed teeth as a sign of submission to an alpha. And how teeth were truly just protruding bones. The salesgirl chummily took Laura's arm, and the two flounced away towards the forest of dresses. Beatriz followed along behind them, leaving her son to his own devices. The thought of leaving the store crossed Ruben's mind, but he was not sure where he would go. The city held little appeal for him. He could also go ahead and try to choose a suit from upstairs, but Ruben was sure that whatever he picked would be wrong somehow. Beatriz usually found a fault in color, or fabric, that Ruben would have to deal with.

Ruben stationed himself in a chair, just to the left of the alcove where the changing rooms were. From there, his mind drifted back to his work. Not his schoolwork, simplistic and boring, but his experiments. He needed to get his hands on another subject soon. His last one had been a lucky acquisition. Ruben had been accompanying his mother to a nearby farm to discuss something about tractor noises ruining Beatriz's parties when one of the pigs had been pronounced dead by one of the farmer's sons. Ruben paid for the pig's corpse to be delivered to the back of the shed, just on the edge of the Victoriano's property in the dead of night. A worthwhile purchase, in his mind. His only other subjects had been roadkill, and Ruben had not been able to work with anything more than a skeleton with skin in so long.

Left with a wheelbarrow of pig, and only needing to return the wheelbarrow by morning, Ruben had plunged into the basement from the backyard with his new find, taking a tunnel made for servants in order to get to his laboratory under the house. Big enough to accommodate a man with a serving cart, the only thing that was easy about the journey was the labor involved. The scent was unbearable, a mix of pig slop, decay, and mold from the house above him. Nothing was visible. Ruben had to rely on his hearing to note his progress. Aside from the squeaking of the occasional mouse, there were no other souls in that long, dank tunnel. Soon the dim lights of Ruben's appropriated laboratory came into view.

Previously a storage room, Ruben had pushed the unwanted furniture into the very back of the wine cellar and adopted the place as his own. Furnished with several tables that no one would miss, and decorated with the skeletons and skins of his experiments, Ruben's lab presented an intricate look at the wonders of anatomy. Ruben struggled to get the pig up onto the table, but managed by rolling it up a makeshift staircase, composed of an ottoman and a slightly shorter table.

Laura strutted by at that moment, trailed by the salesgirl holding a dress over her arm. A burgundy dress, silken and far too long. No doubt Beatriz's choice, hoping for Laura to maintain her modesty at a high school dance.

Another subject would be ideal, since Ruben had nearly worked the pig carcass to uselessness. The brain had been removed, the anomalies in it noted, and the veins were a marvel to strip from the flesh. Carefully, Ruben had taken his scalpel, stolen from the high school building's biology laboratories, and run it under each protruding branch of veins. His work had to be fast, in order to win out over nature's inevitable march of decay. At the same time, he needed to be precise if he wanted the whole vein, which required painstakingly following the trail of each nerve, out to each branch of each new fork. The more he worked, the easier the work became. Soon, Ruben had taken the entirety of the pig's ventrical system out and could lay it out like strings of Christmas lights.

On the other side of the store, Laura let out a gasp and the two girls laughed it off. There was more chatter, with Laura asking the salesgirl to "not strain" herself and the salesgirl making placating noises in return.

Ruben was getting tired of working with animals, seeing the details that he had already memorized. His ideal next subject would be a human that he could kill in the lab, where it would be freshest. Where to get another subject though? It was 2007. People noticed when other people went missing. Even grifters had friends these days. Maybe hunting someone down over a period of days would be the best approach, seeing if they had friends or family who would miss them. Where would the time come from, then, given that Ruben was still in school?

"Laura Victoriano, don't even think for one second--!"

"I just want to try it on, Mama. Nothing more than that, I promise."

The trio of women came to the dressing room alcoves, laden with dresses. The burgundy dress from earlier was still horrifically present, but Ruben noted with some satisfaction that it was at the bottom of the pile. Another dress, satin stretched over a ribbed texture and heart-shaped neckline was promising. Lastly, Laura held one of the carapaces from the front window, crusted with shiny, faceted red stones, with neither sleeves, nor straps. By the most generous estimates, it would come to just over Laura's dangling fingertips. Maybe to the tips of her manicure, but only on a prayer.

Laura's promise that she only wanted to try it on did little to improve their mother's dour frown. "I'm going to try to find you some other options. Something less whorish." Her mother turned on her heel and marched back to the racks of dresses. The salesgirl skittered along behind her, perhaps hoping to guide their mother through the polished cotton wilderness. Laura only watched her mother for another beat before turning to her brother.

"Well, I'm trying them on."

"Go ahead. I think all of the rooms are empty." Laura peered under the door of the first one, straightened up, and then swung inside. The rustling of fabric started almost immediately. The alacrity of the process betrayed her glee. "I'll never understand you, Laura. How do you find this so appealing?"

"The same way you find your animals appealing," Laura replied. "It's just in my nature."

"Fashion and science are not the same thing. I'll gladly debate that with you."

"Debate accepted." Laura's voice began to sound strained as she fought with something behind the door. "But you're going to have to—Ow!"

"Are you alright?"

"Fine, fine, my hair got caught in the zipper. Do you think you can help me?"

There was a silence as Ruben weighed his options. "Laura, I'm a man."

"You're thirteen, and you're helping your sister. No one is going to fault you." Another pause. "Please, Ruben?" He took a deep breath, slow and quiet, before getting out of the chair to help her. Ruben opened the door to her changing room and wished he could take it back.

Laura was standing with her back to him. Sure enough, halfway up her back, the zipper of the red shell of a dress had tangled into one of the longer strands of Laura's hair. The snarl at the mouth of the zipper was easy to fix; he pinched the hair half an inch over the snag, and pulled the zipper away from it. The hair stretched and snapped, with Laura giving a soft whimper at the pull. With the bulk of Laura's hair salvaged, Ruben picked the ragged ball of hair from the zipper.

"Done."

"Thank you. I could have called Mama, but I didn't want to hear any more about the dress. Could you maybe do the rest while you're back there?"

Ruben's eyes drank in the velvety cream of Laura's back. Ruben's heart seemed to jump into his throat as he reached out to help her. Irrationally, Ruben wanted to do the opposite of conceal her. He wanted to shove the plated mess of a dress of her and--

 _And what? She's your sister, you idiot,_ Ruben reminded himself. A darker part of his mind, the part of him that got chills from his dissections, whispered, _So what?_ It was extremely illogical to consider. A dangerous fantasy at the very least. At most, it was a small step towards evolutionary ruin. And yet--

"Ruben?" Snapping back to his current predicament—to zipping his sister into a formal dress—Ruben felt almost robotic in his movements. He pulled the tongue of the zipper up her back, until it stopped between her sharp shoulder blades. Ruben closed the top of the dress with a small hook that was sewn into it. Laura turn to face him. "How do I look?"

Beautiful was the first word that came to Ruben's mind, along with tempting and perfect. The plastic gems clacked together as Laura moved. Her legs, already matchstick thin, seemed smaller in the dimness of the changing room. Her arms were similar, spreading their lily pale color to the exposed cords of her collarbone and neck. She was lovely, radiant, a graceful red flower in the darkness.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine. You look fine."

"Do you think Mama will approve?"

Ruben nearly choked on the laugh that crawled up. Laura's thighs were almost entirely on display. Her sternum was almost visible between her nearly exposed breasts. If Ruben had been only a head taller, he would have seen everything on her. "No," Ruben concluded. "I firmly doubt that she'll approve."

"Darn!" Laura turned to see her reflection in the mirror. She pushed her hair forward over her shoulders. She began twirling her hair around her finger, a coquettish gesture that Ruben could not dream of where she had picked it up. She eyed herself and winked at her reflection as if she was performing a playful seducation. "It really does look good though. Maybe I'll come back here and buy it anyway." The fake rubies were tantalizing, gleaming in the light the way that wet brain matter did.

Two quick raps on the door. "Ruben,” screeched Beatriz. “What are you doing in there?!"

"He's just helping me with my zipper, Mama," Laura called back. "It got stuck in my hair."

"For God's sake," Beatriz mumbled. Ruben left the dressing room, feeling a flush creeping into his ears.

//

Back home, in the wee hours of the morning, Ruben found himself unable to sleep. His groin throbbed with need, but Ernesto was up late, working on the computer. The sirens of the internet would have to wait for another night to get chained down and abused.

Still. Something needed to be done.

Ruben considered his experiments, hoping to will himself out of it by coming back to his idea about abducting a grifter. It would need to be done when he was older, when true puberty gave him some kind of physical edge. But it was possible. Weeks of surveillance and pounds of caution could render it possible. Just finding the most vulnerable person, bringing them through the tunnels under the manor, and into his laboratory. All Ruben would need to do is find a way to keep him quiet. Nothing about the idea was deterring his arousal. Ruben tried to touch himself to that idea—to slitting open the throat of some beer-swilling transient and watching his blood spill over his laboratory table—but nothing was making it work for him. He needed something more appealing.

Unbidden, the changing room from the afternoon came to mind. A different version of events that suited Ruben much better. A version where Beatriz was a million miles away. A place where Laura had directed those flirtatious eyes to him instead of her own reflection. She would take him by the hips, pull him back against the wall, and unzip his pants. Ruben's hand slipped past the waistline of his pajama pants, stroking himself to the idea of Laura— _his_ Laura—dropping to her knees to suck him off, taking his cock up to the root. Ruben did not last long beyond the moment that Laura's indigo eyes locking onto his pale blue ones. The cum dripped down his hands, back onto his hips.

Ruben let out a deep breath, wiping his hands off on his pants. He pulled his blanket up to his chin and tried to push it from his mind that he had done it. And more importantly, push away how right it all felt.


	4. Chapter 4

_The few people who have asked_ _me_ _about Ruben have always asked me “Has he always been like that?”_

_“Like what?”_

_“Like…_ That _.”_

_They always mean the same thing, but I always want to see them try to pick out the character flaw in my brother they want to focus on. “Has he always been violent? Has he always_ _been so serious?” The answers are no, and yes. To both. He may have always been violent, and his mood has been serious for as long as I’ve known him. Yet, he’s never hurt me and he’s been known to crack enough jokes that I could never call him perpetually serious._

_The question I have to ask myself is this: “If the lake had gone differently, would Ruben still be the same?”_

Laura had only ever been to the lake house to accompany her mother to retrieve her father. Technically a hunting and fishing lodge for Ernesto and his associates, Laura had never been invited into the lodge itself before; only ever the nearby city to explore the shops. A two-story affair in dark wood, with multiple bedrooms and (she imagined) a beautiful library that she yearned to sink her teeth into. 

In the car, Beatriz had laid down the rules for leisure. "Not a drop of alcohol for either of you," she said, pointing to her children. "No work either. Ruben, no talk of dissections. Laura, no books. Ernesto, no business."

Ernesto had rolled his eyes good-naturedly at his wife. Ruben had frowned and angled his body away from his mother, staring out the window. Laura, the only one who apparently took proper exception to the rule, shot forward. "No books? Not even the ones in the lodge?" 

"There's not much there for you, Laura. It's mostly hunting guides." Ernesto chuckled. "Nothing my future college graduate would be interested in." 

It was a deflection, true, but it made Laura's face beam and pride bubble up in her chest. The arrival of her acceptance letter to Cypress Crest College had sent a flurry of excitement through the household. This weekend retreat to the lakeside was going to be the family's celebration; just the four of them. Their baby girl would be going away to school, and then Ruben would soon after. A victorious melancholy would hang over the house in the coming weeks as Laura packed her bags and prepared to leave. For now, they would have the lake house, the shining beauty of Lake Wither-Would-I, and each other's company. 

This was her party, her celebration, and Laura knew it. She should have been ecstatic. At the same time, all she could focus on was Ruben. Ruben's sullen mood, Ruben's deeper-than-usual withdrawal from the family, Ruben's seeming resentment over the entire affair. What Laura could not see was why. Ruben had always prized education, usually praising Laura's quick wit and perceptiveness before her beauty, unlike most of the men in her life. He had little appreciation for literature—preferring to bury himself in academic texts that got drier as he got older—but he had never tried to dismiss or disapprove of Laura's choices, beyond the standard sibling teasing. Yet there he was, frowning through the entire car ride instead of asking the million questions about the process of college application and acceptance, like Laura had hoped he would. 

She hoped that Ruben's mood would get better when they had spent some time on the lake. When they got to the lake, Laura's first priority was a quick dip. Rushing into one of the bedrooms to change into a bathing suit, Laura dashed out to the lake while the rest of her family was still settling in, bringing in their clothes and provisions. Her mother caught sight of her and called after her: "Laura Victoriano, what in God's name are you wearing?!" 

"It's a bikini, Mama," she shouted back. 

"It's sin! Put a towel on!" 

"I'll be back soon!" 

Her mother did not push the issue further. She could not, as the screen door was already slamming on the edge of the doorjamb before Beatriz could form her reply. Barefoot, careless for the consequences, Laura dashed down the incline that the house was situated on, down to the lake. Dipping the tips of her painted toes in, and finding the water pleasantly cool, Laura stepped into the water up to her knees. The solitude of the lake was amazing, and she could not hear anything of the world around her. No cars, no other voices, nothing but the chirping of birds and the whooshing of the wind. 

As she understood it, Laura was on the edge of a grand adventure. Adulthood was coming on fast wings, ready or not. The person she was going to become had not been decided yet. The artist she wanted to be was still incubating, as far as she could tell. She wrote occasionally, short stories and ideas for longer, pulpier works. Nothing was certain, everything was possible, and Laura could not see the possibilities ahead of her as clearly as she could see the anxiety that the future brought. As the water swirled around her, so did her potential. She needed a rock, a safe harbor to return to now and again. She had always imagined that it would be her parents, but her distance from them grew with every social season and church event. 

"Laura." She turned around, her hair slipping over shoulder as she did so. Ruben stood on the shore, maybe ten feet away. He was holding a towel, presumably from their mother. "Mother wants to know what you want for dinner." 

"What? Oh! It doesn't matter. Beef, I guess. With a green salad." Ruben nodded and began to walk away. "Ruben, wait." He turned back around. His gaze was neither angry, nor happy. Merely patient. "Ruben, are you upset about something?" 

"No." 

"Truly?" 

"No," he said, more slowly. "Laura, I..." He cut himself off. His lungs expanded, his shoulders rose. "Laura, I know that you have to leave." 

"Just to go to school. I'll be back during holidays, you know that." 

"I hear about people growing apart when one of the two goes away to school." 

Was that it? Not the fact that Laura was going away, but the fact that she was going away from him specifically?  _“We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.”_  Laura could recite most of her favorite book from memory, but this was not the time for her to worry about the forces that drove them away from each other. This was the time for her dear little brother, and reassuring him of the bond that Laura considered to be everlasting. "Oh, Ruben. You don't need to worry about that at all." Laura came out of the lake and wrapped her brother in an embrace. "We're more than just friends. We're family. You know that."

"I know," he said, standing stiffly in her arms. He had always been so stiff, so formal, even as children. Laura could hardly take any of it personally. This eternal winter of his was just Ruben's way of living. Laura hoped that someone would be able to open him up to warmth, in the way that sun thawed ice-capped mountains. Some beautiful person in his life would be able to tear him away from that cold that he surrounded himself with, and open him to the warmth of love that would shake his formality loose into something comfortable and happy. And even if he never did... 

"I'll always love you, Ruben," Laura promised. 


	5. Chapter 5

When the Victorianos arrived at Cypress Crest University to help Laura move in, Ruben had been given a simple task of manual labor: Arranging the small mountain of books that Laura had brought to school. They were to be shelved into three short, squat shelves, in matching ivory-colored plastic, and could be pushed together under the dormitory's window to form a faux-daybed. Ernesto and Beatriz had gone off to Student Accounts, no doubt writing one of the checks that would pay for the next four years of Laura's education. For his own part, Ruben sat on the floor, pushing his sweat-soaked hair off the back of his neck and sliding books into place. "In Hushed Whispers." "The Great Gatsby." All kinds of literature that Ruben couldn't bring himself to care about. All the books that Laura loved dearly. Part of Ruben  _wanted_ to like those books. The pages that Laura lost herself in had wrapped themselves around her heart, tight as papier-mache, and Ruben found himself envying those books. Ruben wanted what they had. He wanted to be close enough to act as a membrane around her slick, beating heart. 

The building that Laura would be living in was called Shatto House. A brownstone building at the very front of the campus that looked precisely as it did in the college brochure: A brick box against a cloudless blue sky. Shatto House was a single-sex dormitory and promised a “classy and fun” environment to serve as a home for the next four years. Ruben would have hoped for a better place than this. The dormitories were just small cubicles, though some were given character by virtue of a radiator, a strange window, or (as Ruben saw when he went off in search of a bathroom) a sloping ceiling that threatened to drop the Marilyn Monroe posters down on its occupants' heads. 

Laura's dormitory was a tastefully decorated place, given its character by virtue of being fairly narrow. It was a single, with white walls and a dark hardwood floor that showed its age in the many, wide and inconsistent spaces between the slats. In terms of décor, Laura was keeping things minimal. Only one of her mother's paintings had made the cut: a landscape of the sunflowers at the back of the lawn. Sunflowers were Laura's favorite flower, and their mother knew it. Beatriz had painted the picture specifically for her daughter. Ruben wished that he had been as thoughtful with his gift. His was a pragmatic choice, a desk lamp with a rotating base that she could place pens and other stationery items into. At the same time,  _sunflowers_ _,_ he thought. Ruben vowed to be more mindful when he got a graduation gift for her.

All at once, the door of the dorm burst open and Laura-- that occupant of Ruben's own slick, beating heart-- whirled into the room. Her flip-flops smacked on the hardwood floor as she entered. "You wouldn't believe the rush on the bookstore." Her arms were laden with thick books with dry names, which she deposited on her desk in a haphazard pile. Laura's long hair was tied in a ponytail that coiled down her back like a silken snake as she moved around the room, hanging up her purse on her bedpost and taking off her sunglasses. "Do you remember when Papa took us to the lake over the summer and we threw bread in the water just to watch the fish gather?" 

He did not remember throwing bread to fish in the lake. What Ruben remembered was Laura's shoulder blades flashing between locks of hair. He remembered her embracing him while wearing scarcely more than underwear, and how beautifully tense he had felt for hours after that. He remembered sharing a bed with her, trying to focus on anything but her breathing, and he remembered gutting a fish perfectly on his first try the next day, to the surprise of his father. But he supposed Laura knew what she was talking about. "Sure." 

"That was the bookstore." 

Ruben chuckled at her and went back to shelving. "You got everything you needed?"

"Just about. I already had some things." Laura sat at the desk the dormitory had provided, and began arranging the books in a neat row along the back of her desk. 

Running low on the stack of books in the box, Ruben swiveled around. One book—Laura's beloved  _Anna Karenina_ — was conspicuous by its absence. "I don't see Miss Karenina here. Where is it?" 

"It's at home, on your nightstand. It's a going-away present for you." 

Something stirred in Ruben, like a cat kicking violently in death thrashes against his heart. "For me?" 

"Yes. Even if you don't like novels, I want you to have it for a while. A keepsake. Maybe you'll get something from just flipping through the pages. Like how Papa plays with that set of balance balls on his desk while he makes phone calls." 

"You want me to flip through a novel to relax?" 

"It could comfort you, Ruben. It's very tactile. And you might find a sentence or two that you like. And, well..." Laura giggled. "A lady might mistake you for being well-read if you take it with you to school." 

"A lady?" Ruben scoffed. Shelving the last two books (Fowles' "The Collector" and “The Odyssey"), Ruben got to his feet. "You sound like mother." 

"Maybe. But we all just want you to be happy." 

"I know." Ruben could scarcely answer the question of what would make him happy. Whenever Ruben tried to imagine his life, people rarely factored into it, least of all some strange woman with whom he would become intimate. The only one Ruben really saw when he considered his future was Laura. Laura, barefoot in the manor's kitchen, making her lemon tea at night and her milky coffee during the morning. Laura, spinning in a circle in the master bedroom's full-length mirror, lifting the hem of her latest dress as she spun. Clipping miniature sunflowers from the back gardens, and getting lost in the fields of them when Summer brought them to bloom. All Ruben could see in his ideal future was Laura, Laura, Laura, and that was enough to make him happy. "I know that's all you want." 

On Laura's desk, her sleek cell phone buzzed. Just once, indicating a text message. Laura glanced at it. "Mama and Papa are ready to leave. Mama's a wreck in the car, or they would come up and say goodbye themselves." Laura rose from the desk and extended her arms forward. The summer had left them tanned and soft. "Come here. This is the last we'll be seeing of each other for a while." Ruben's heart began beating hard and fast, blood rushing in his ears, as he approached her. With some stiffness, Ruben let Laura wrap him in an embrace. His arms came up around her, bringing her close. Pressing Laura's head to his shoulder, Ruben smelled the scents of her: Her shampoo, her perfume, her sweat. Inhaling as deeply and sharply as he dared, Ruben took her in. 

"I'll miss you terribly," she told him. 

"I'll miss you too." 

"You'll visit me, won't you?" 

"I will." 

"Even when you're away at college yourself?" 

"I will. I'll make the time." 

"Good." Laura squeezed him once, hard, before pulling back. "Take care of Mama and Papa for me." 

"I will." He would not. Their parents did not need care-taking, and Ruben did not care enough to do it. As far as Ruben was concerned, Ernesto and Beatriz Victoriano could rot in mass graves with the rest of their friends, fingertips barely touching through the pile. But if it would make her happy, Ruben would tell Laura as many lies as she wanted to hear, and that included one of the biggest: That he still cared about their parents. Ruben looked earnestly into Laura's eyes. The color should have been so cold, but the compassion Laura had nurtured for eighteen years shined through like light. The words slipped out of him without his permission. "I love you." 

"I love you too, Ruben." 

_No,_ he wanted to say.  _I love you more than you can ever know._ He could never tell her. Loving her this deeply would be his eternal shame. Ruben would die with that secret tucked firmly into his heart, and letting Laura go away to school seemed to confirm how final that was. Melancholy swelling up in him, Ruben let go of Laura and said his final goodbyes. He made his way down the two flights of stairs and out of the building that would be his sister's home for the year. He slid into the family car, directly behind his mother. Beatriz leaned into Ernesto, weeping into her husband's shoulder. 

"Laura's settled in?" 

"Yes. When I left her, she was arranging her books." 

Beatriz gave a particularly loud sniffle at that. 

Ruben was silent for the car ride home, the entire two hours. He stared out the window, watching the buildings as they faded to trees, and trees as they faded to sky. Eventually, Ruben got out of the car, made his excuses to his parents, and went into the house to find what Laura had left for him. Sure enough, Laura's beloved, weathered copy of  _Anna Karenina_ was sitting on his nightstand, just where Laura said it would be. The light of the sunset filtered through his window, giving an otherworldly, golden gleam to the shiny leather of the hardbound book. Ruben took the five steps into his room and lifted the heavy tome. He turned to the flyleaf, because writing a message in a flyleaf was so sentimental, so poetic, so  _Laura Maria Victoriano._ Sure enough, there was a scribbled message: Red ink, in Laura's thin, spidery handwriting. 

_My Dearest Ruben,_

_"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."_

_Our family has been uniquely happy, because it has always had me and you._

_Love always,_

_Laura_

**Author's Note:**

> I had told myself that I would just write the idea that became "Belle of the Ball" and then be done with the RuvikxLaura pairing. A review came in for BotB from a user named Jen, asking if I would write anymore from the Victoriano kids. I said I wasn't sure, and definitely wouldn't do any long-term projects. Then I went and completely contradicted myself so, Jen, this one's for you!


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